Definitions for Midterm Flashcards
Majority Language
- languages highly valued in society
- spoken by a majority of people, including the power elite
- predominate in mass media and public institutions
Minority Language
- language less valued by society
- spoken by fewer people
- not present or less evident in media or public institutions
Heritage Language
a minority language (either immigrant or indigenous) learned by its speakers at home as children, and difficult to be fully developed because of insufficient input from the social environment. The speakers grow up with a different dominant language in which they become more competent.
Social Prestige
the degree of respect that a variety of language has
Official Languages
- language that is designated by law as the language of the society
Monolingual
(of a person or society) speaking only one language.
Bilingual
- the regular use of two (or more) languages
- use of these languages in their everday lives
Multilingual
in or using several languages.
Dialect
a particular form of a language which is peculiar to a specific region or social group.
Idiolect
the speech habits peculiar to a particular person.
Bidialectal
proficient in or using two dialects of the same language.
NonMainstream American English Speaker (NMAE)
refers to a variety of dialects including African American English, Appalachian English, Caribbean English Creoles, Chicano/Latino English, Hawaiian Creole English, and Southern American English.
Mainstream American English Speaker (MAE/SAE)
to refer to the kind of spoken or written English that is taught in schools and is used in the workplace, in newspapers, on news broadcasts, and by politicians
Contrastive Feature
- features that differentiate languages/dialects
Non-contrastive feature
- common features across both languages/dialects
Code-switching
- systematic and rule-governed
- bilinguals switching from one name language to the other
- is appropriate for all learners of all ages/proficiency levels
Translanguaging
- ## deployment of the speaker’s full repertoire without regard to named languages and grammars
Simultaneous Bilingualism
Both languages are learned from birth or soon after birth
Sequential Bilingualism
occurs when a person becomes bilingual by first learning one language and then another
Early/Late Bilingualism
Early bilinguals will mostly have acquired their second language naturally, in particular when we are speaking about a pre-school child. (cf. Hofmann 1997: 34) The term late bilingualism refers to people who have learned their second language during adulthood or in other words after the age of puberty.
First Language (L1)
- First language learned by a sequential bilingual
Second Language (L2)
- Second language learned by a sequential bilingual
Language Proficiency
relates to a person’s ability to produce and understand a particular language
Language Dominance
the relative strength of a bilingual’s proficiency in each language